On the Antiquities of Prussia

A HENDECASYLLABIC POEM BY SEBASTIAN MIRITIUS OF KÖNIGSBERG.

Although the metal lurking in dark caverns
might equal the starry hue in its luster,
it is of no value, however,
unless it is extracted from the lowest depths
of the earth. Thus Prussia, though blessed with
countless gifts, and competing with every
fertile place, rich in delightful
rivers, teeming with every kind of fish,
and though it brings forth in its pathless forests
fierce animals and noble swift-footed steeds,
unknown even to the learned Greeks of old,
and unlike these, the elk,
horrific in appearance, and the aurochs,
and further abounds in all manner of wild beasts,
the better part of which—the pelt itself—is held
to be worn by noble princes;
and though the burning ocean gives as tribute amber,
yet, because these things have until now been submerged
in Lethean shadows, they were known only to the natives:
The sagacious Stella has brought all these things
to the light of day, offering them for all to read
in this little book, not without elegance.